When a consumer purchases information over a computer network, in the case that the consumer pays for the information based on how long the consumer maintains access to the information, one obstacle to be overcome is the reluctance of a consumer to trust the vendor supplying the information. The consumer must trust the information vendor in two respects: first, to provide information of acceptable quality, and second, to charge the consumer accurately, based on the time the consumer maintains access to the information.
What is needed is a way to overcome this obstacle and so promote the sale of information over a computer network. Ideally, a method overcoming the obstacle would have various desirable features. One such feature is that the consumer would not need to reveal the consumer's identity to the vendor; providing credit card information to a vendor over a computer network is always a source of concern to consumers. Ideally also, the consumer would not need to trust the information vendor to correctly compute the charge for delivering the paid-for-information services. Further, because today people move from computer location to computer location, the consumer should not have to maintain a single network address to be billed for purchases made at different addresses; the consumer should be able to move from one location to another on the computer network and still be billed as the same entity.
Further still, the consumer should not need any special software. The consumer should have of course the software required to access other locations over the computer network, but should not need software dedicated to billing. In the case that the computer network is the Internet, the purchaser should need a web browser, but ideally, no more. In contrast, the information vendor probably would need some software dedicated to billing, but ideally, this software would be only software for verifying and canceling transactions.
Ideally also, although the vendor does not receive billing information from the consumer, nevertheless the vendor should be solely responsible for actually providing the information being purchased and also responsible for its content. Finally, a consumer should be able to make multiple purchases of access to information from a vendor without having always to re-establish authorization for each different access to information from the same vendor.